The difficult child. Writer, lesbian, feminist, hyper Jewish girl in combat boots. Suffers from low grade (but entirely justifiable!) paranoia. Draws, writes, jumps rope, programs html, and sings when no one is listening. Devotee of golden-age sci fi pulps, Lovecraft, Japanese language, war fiction, Asian history, and classic movie actresses. Suspicious of authority, ardent defender of the Constitution, refuses to conform to gender constructs. Dances in stairwells, screams in hallways. Approach with caution. Use within thirty days of opening. Do not remove tag under penalty of law.

I have never experienced a deep, true feeling of political fear until now. I thought I had-- Homeland Security is a shudder-worthy concept even on the most brightly lit of days, and I certainly wasn't pleased with the last election-- but no. What I felt today pales comparison, a moment when every fictional sci-fi dictatorship I've ever read about suddenly loomed large in the threshold.

Now, if you go down towards the end of the article, you can read an excerpt from the actual text of the treaty which, measure for measure, feeds and illuminates the animated sense of urgency Lord Mockton so obviously feels*. I am an ardent constitutionalist. Our Constitution is one of the most beautiful, important documents in the history of the world, possibly the rosetta stone of all modern political writing. We have a President who has expressed numerous times his frustrations with the "constraints" the Constitution places on him. (Not that he's the first. *cough*dubyah*coughcough*) Now he has the opportunity to take place in the construction of a framework that will override the document that has granted us this nation, with all it's plenty and it's problems.

I took a class in college on the Book of Job. The question at the center of an entire semester's debate was: 'Why, if we have a compassionate God, do people suffer?' The answer was: "Because we have free will." The world was perfect until Eve took the apple in hand and chose (was in part cooerced) to disobey-- from her hand come all our choices, good and bad.

Wouldn't you rather face the possibility of suffering as a free being, than experience total protection from harm in the bonds of servitude?-Meredith

*(That is not to say that Mockton himself does not have a hidden agenda. It's politics-- everyone has an agenda. Ususally sinister. Good times.)

The amount of effort needed to get real information is absolutely obscene, isn't it? I always have a niggling sensation that I come off as "paranoid" to most of my friends-- but I feel that it is my duty as a citizen to be informed. The apathy is palpable these days, and that's what allows most of this nonsense to go on in the first place.

Hmm. A late-eighties Conservative who advised Thatcher, blithely describes the EU as a "left-wing regime" (clearly Italy, France and the UK itself don't figure on his radar, or else he's making the unprofound point that Europe is more centrist than the US), thinks that the communists became environmentalists (what?) and that "there is no problem with climate", is worried that the US is about to sign a treaty that will cede its sovereignty? Does he not think the US Senate would have to ratify the treaty? And that kind of rhetoric scares me because of how very cynical and knowing it is: he talks about "beacon[s] of freedom", and "communists" (seriously, scaremongering with communists? what is it, 1981?) and then he quotes Winston Churchill, which is always the oratorical panacea for everything among a certain type of peer. What's he really trying to achieve, here? It's not what he says he is.

I have no doubt that Lord Mockton's intentions are no where near what he says they are-- I'm in no way moved by his borrowed WW2 imagery. However, I also have no doubt that Obama's intentions are not what he says they are either.

The idea of paying "reparations" for climate damage is ridiculous. And, whether or not the Senate would ratify the treaty is immaterial (even if they did, Jefferson's provisions in the Constitution regarding treaties makes it quite clear where their validity lies when they come into direct contradiction of our founding tenants). What is important is the intent behind signing such a treaty; if Obama does sign it, it makes it very clear where his priorities lie... laughably remote from the duty of his office to serve the American people.